Is there a good book about pregnancy and birth anyone can recommend that is vegan-approved?

I specifically DON'T recommend "HypnoBirthing, The Mongan Method". Some of the philosophies in the book are actually pretty cool. The practices suggested weren't what we wanted. Unfortunately, this book seems to act like a magnet that attracts pendulum practitioners, caster oil cavorters, and general hocus pocus. It is unfortunate that a book not promoting that nonsense seems to carry the baggage everywhere but this has been my experience.

Is there a good book about pregnancy and birth anyone can recommend that is vegan-approved?

I specifically DON'T recommend "HypnoBirthing, The Mongan Method". Some of the philosophies in the book are actually pretty cool. The practices suggested weren't what we wanted. Unfortunately, this book seems to act like a magnet that attracts pendulum practitioners, caster oil cavorters, and general hocus pocus. It is unfortunate that a book not promoting that nonsense seems to carry the baggage everywhere but this has been my experience.

Do you happen to know of a better version of something similar? I think some of the ideas sound useful, but the things you mentioned are what I was hoping to avoid (ie the hocus pocus stuff), but I'm all for natural pain management techniques.

_________________when you realise how perfect everything is, you will tilt you head back and laugh at the sky. -buddha

I liked Hypnobirthing. The affirmations were good - especially "this baby is the perfect size for my body" when I was scared about her being too big. I also did Calm Birth meditations and loved the practices you do leading up to birth to open up your body and breath into your womb.

_________________My oven is bigger on the inside, and it produces lots of wibbly wobbly, cake wakey... stuff. - The PoopieB.

My wife says the most successful affirmation that she told herself while in labor was "I don't have to live forever". I don't know if that's helpful...

Haha, oh dear...

Tofulish wrote:

I liked Hypnobirthing. The affirmations were good - especially "this baby is the perfect size for my body" when I was scared about her being too big. I also did Calm Birth meditations and loved the practices you do leading up to birth to open up your body and breath into your womb.

Thank you, that's exactly what I'm looking for! Especially the breathing into opening type stuff. I know that will help me mentally so much, so I've been hoping to find a good source for that!

_________________when you realise how perfect everything is, you will tilt you head back and laugh at the sky. -buddha

My wife says the most successful affirmation that she told herself while in labor was "I don't have to live forever". I don't know if that's helpful...

Yeah, no, that doesn't sound very helpful at all. Something that was helpful to me to calm my pre-labor nerves is telling myself I could live through anything for a few days. No matter how bad it got, it would be over soon. Labor is not permanent.

I like thinking that at time/day N in the future, this will all be over, no matter how well or badly things go. This helped me get though pre-wedding stress, grad school exams, finishing and defending my thesis, lots of moves, stressful weeks here and there, and labor. I had a looong pushing stage but I knew I wasn't going to be pushing forever without getting booted to the hospital. So I kept telling myself, well, I'll give this a good effort and by this afternoon I won't be pregnant anymore no matter what happens.

So true. I felt really overwhelmed by labor bc I thought 'I can't handle 20+hrs of this.' Then my doula said 'Based on my experience you are more than half there', and it felt so much more finite and manageable at the time. Doula = best money spent in our pregnancy.

Bodhi, Calm Birth relies on 'womb breathing' and I found the meditations so helpful. I did both Calm Birth and Hypnobirthing (cds not the classes) in the last 6 weeks or so and felt they were great support and training for me. You can do many of the mediations with your partner too.

And postpartum I listened to "journey of the body" a healing meditation. It was so helpful.

_________________My oven is bigger on the inside, and it produces lots of wibbly wobbly, cake wakey... stuff. - The PoopieB.

Heh. See that's what killed me. The thought of never ending labor and one of the midwives saying that "early labor" (contracting every 4 minutes!) could last for days. She was a nice lady, but what a dumbpants thing to say to a stressed out laboring woman.

Refinnej, that's awful. When I was in labor, I called one of the midwives in the practice on Monday afternoon (Vi was born Tuesday around noon) and said my back was hurting between contractions (which at that point I'd been having since Saturday, albeit not very intense and with timings all over the place). She told me I was probably having back labor and that this usually meant contractions but that the baby was trying to turn and no progress with dilation would be made until the baby got turned. She thought I was probably not more than 1cm dilated. We got sent to that turning babies website and were getting into all sorts of weird positions and rubbing my belly with towels and any manner of crazy.

Well, it turns out that was nonsense and I was probably in transition then. The midwife who ended up delivering my baby was going to have some words with the rest of her (mostly less senior) practice about dismissing everything as "back labor."

The most discouraging thing during my whole labor, though, was pushing for about two hours and then being told "you're getting so close! We can see a dime sized piece of the baby's head!"

I like thinking that at time/day N in the future, this will all be over, no matter how well or badly things go. This helped me get though pre-wedding stress, grad school exams, finishing and defending my thesis, lots of moves, stressful weeks here and there, and labor. I had a looong pushing stage but I knew I wasn't going to be pushing forever without getting booted to the hospital. So I kept telling myself, well, I'll give this a good effort and by this afternoon I won't be pregnant anymore no matter what happens.

I find it so much easier to get through things I know are finite.

That's how I got through labor too. I told myself, no matter what, it would be over in a day or so, and then the 9 months of pregnancy would *finally* be over. The funny thing is I never really used that before, but just last Friday I had a day long job interview that included a presentation to the whole office, tons of interviews and a work sample. I was so so so so nervous, but I just kept telling myself, "well, it will be over in 8 hours. It can't be worse than labor!" So having gone through labor actually helped me get through the interview!

_________________I'm not asking for utopian dreams...just a little peace in this world. That's a logical thing. - Deee-Lite

I took Bradley classes and was the only vegan in my class. Bradley method is super big on protein and the day we wrote down everything we ate that day and calculated the protein amounts mine were the highest in the class by far. That pretty much prevented any anti-vegan stuff the rest of the class (the other members of the class were asking ME how they could get more protein in their diets), but the Bradley method in general is not very vegan friendly so your mileage may vary when it comes to teachers.

I did not find the Bradley method terribly useful for dealing with labor because they really gave us very few concrete skills (I really want to try hypnobirthing next time, everyone I know who has used it has had great success). There was a lot of discussion about when to go to the hospital, etc. and how to say no to interventions. After all of that none of it applied to me because my actual labor was super crazy and high intervention and I found that I had zero tools to deal with things like being bedridden, being constantly monitored, feeling numb, etc. I would highly recommend a) finding a doula who is good at supporting women in any kind of situation (my doula was great for the 8 hours or so I could feel my contractions and then completely sucked when I got an epidural and was totally useless to me for the rest of the labor and delivery, even when it came to helping me stick to the parts of my birth plan that could've been stuck to) and b) thinking through the kinds of things you would need to do or need to have to deal with interventions. Also, if you have a birth plan, making sure there are contingencies and doing whatever you can to get your providers on board with those contingencies. My midwife decided that if one piece of my birth plan wasn't happening, it meant that nobody gave a crepe about everything else, even though all that other stuff became infinitely more important to me at that point and six months later I'm still dwelling on those little things that should've gone better.

I felt that way about Bradley. I am glad we went, because it definitely helped educate my partner into being a better birth coach and understanding the elements of our birth plan, so he could advocate for me, which he did well. And our teacher is super vegan friendly. But I do feel like Bradley and our doula both prepared us for a long labor with the contractions that slowly got closer so you just needed to learn to breath through them and keep your strength up. It didn't prepare me for a fast labor and so I felt pretty unprepared. My water broke and my contractions got real close real fast, and I remember thinking "This isn't how its supposed to go!" If I hadn't read LittleBears birth story, I would have felt more panicked. Even my midwife didn't believe me when I called her and even once we were at the hospital.

Our doula was awesome, and our birth plan was respected during the birth, and I definitely think she was the best money we spent, because she did have a ton of experience even in a c-section/high intervention environment.

I think your advice is so great though - definitely make sure your doula is ready to support you even if you don't have the traditional first birth.

_________________My oven is bigger on the inside, and it produces lots of wibbly wobbly, cake wakey... stuff. - The PoopieB.

When I was in labour the last time, I was thinking, "this can't be worse than getting burned!" (Seriously, a 2"x4" burn had me in pieces -- sobbing, and curled in a ball for 8 hours, and I am usually a pretty tough, crabby cookie.) I'm not saying my labours were easy and lovely, but I really hope y'all never get burned because there is worse pain out there than labour!!

(I hope this doesn't sound whiny/mompetition. That's not my intention. I'm just sayin' there are things out there in this world worse than labour and they are very, very bad indeed.)

I don't know, knowing that there's worse pain out there doesn't help me somehow. :) I was really ill several years ago (lost gobs of blood from girly problems, but didn't know enough to know how bad it was). I had some sort of weird migraine that is still the worst pain I've experienced in my clumsy life. I might have, if asked at just the right moment, chosen death over continuing this pain that was of an as yet unknown cause. Given all that....I still cried from pain at times during labor and just wished that it was all over, etc.

Oh, yeah, I'm not saying it's any kind of consolation when you're facing hard contractions. "Woo-hoo! This isn't as bad as a 2"x4" burn, having a catheter inserted when I have a UTI, that one really horrible UTI where my urethra was spasming, OR refinnej's migraine! Behold the miracle of life!"

(But I did grow up hearing labour pain was the worst pain in the world and that it would have me begging for pain meds and that I would be a big fat wimpy wimp and that didn't happen. So there, naysayers!)